Minor Quake Shakes Nervous City

A minor earthquake rattled nerves in Los Angeles on Sunday morning, sparking fears of an explosion or terror attack in a public made jittery over the U.S. airstrikes on Afghanistan.

No damage was reported from the shallow temblor, which struck at 10:29 a.m. and was centered in Silver Lake, said Doug Given, a U.S. Geological Survey seismologist at Cal Tech in Pasadena.

“It was a sharp jolt, and it apparently caused some people some angst, thinking it was an explosion,” Given said. “We got a surprising number of calls for an event of this magnitude.”

The 2.9-magnitude earthquake was too small to associate definitively with any fault, but was not related to the 4.2-magnitude West Hollywood earthquake on Sept. 9, Given said. However, a 2.3-magnitude quake, which struck at 1:53 a.m. Sunday in Beverly Hills, is believed to be an aftershock of last month’s event, Given said.